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Cleantech startup helping social tenants battle fuel poverty raises six-figure seed funding

Cleantech startup Switchee, which is rolling out smart thermostat technology for large social landlords, has announced it has raised a further £480k to bring its total seed funding to over £1m.

London-based impact investment firm, Mustard Seed Ventures and Singapore’s InseadAlum Ventures participated in the the latest funding round, which will help to accelerate the roll-out programme of its thermostat tech which it claims can help residents save money on their bills.

Further backing came from investment bank ClearlySo and former Managing Director of British Gas, Ian Peters, who played a key role in the energy firm’s Connected Home and Hive business.

The latest funding injection follows the startup’s initial £605k seed funding round back in October, which was led by Mustard Seed Ventures and included participation from ClearlySo, Wayra and Pi Labs.

Adam Fudakowski, Managing Director of Switchee, commented: “The support for our second oversubscribed seed round affirms the need for technological innovation in the UK’s social housing market.

“We can now build on the success of our pilots with 15 housing associations and local authorities to further develop our analytics platform and deliver a significant return on investment for the landlords who use Switchee, while delivering greater energy and cost savings for residents.”

Utilising sensors, learning algorithms and analytics, the London-based tech firm’s smart thermostat can automatically learn a tenant’s behaviour and provide landlords with a suite of analytics and data which can help them manage their residential portfolios.

Alex Pitt, Mustard Seed Director added: “Switchee has envisioned, and continues to deliver against, an innovative business model which aligns tangible landlord savings and benefits with a compelling social mission - namely to eliminate fuel poverty among social housing residents.

“We are very proud to continue supporting the team, including via our investment in their latest funding round.”

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